Secrets, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

I never liked smoking weed.

I always had a hard time telling whether or not I was high. When I was younger, I assumed it was because I just didn’t know what it felt like. I always figured that I was maybe just smoking it wrong? Even today, at 32, I don’t really relate to any movies or jokes about being stoned, except maybe that Squidward meme about the edibles hitting in the supermarket (Ok, never mind, a quick google search has informed me that that’s not a popular meme, so I guess it just be some random obscure one that one of my stoner friends posted on IG stories like once.)

Anyway, all I ever felt was 1. nothing, 2. the paranoid fear that I would somehow forget to breathe, and 3. the other paranoid fear that I might be paralyzed, because my body had suddenly turned to cement.

Also, I have fainted on more than one occasion after smoking way too much. (Just trying to FEEL something, dammit!)

But as I’m typing this, I’m high as fuck. In fact, these last couple weeks I have been low key getting high as fuck.

It’s like I suddenly get it. It’s not like alcohol; it doesn’t transform you into another person. Instead, it just makes you feel ok. Like actually ok.

I have been more productive lately. I can actually put my phone down. I can build a whole blog. I can do yoga. I can edit my photos for work. It’s like it just takes away all the fog and depression and laziness.

It’s like everything I wanted alcohol to be, and never was. And yet, I never liked pot because it wasn’t alcohol; alcohol was my friend. Alcohol helped me run away from my inner monologue, and my phobias, and honestly, from myself.

Cannabis has never given me an escape from myself. I thought I couldn’t “feel” anything, because the feeling I was searching for was that complete departure from my own stupid brain. Marijuana does the opposite- it keeps you more present and in your self than ever. No wonder I hated it so much.

You see, up until recently, I have been on a secret mission to ruin my own life.

I didn’t consciously realize it, but more and more, I would find myself getting absolutely shit faced, and saying and doing things that I know would cause myself problems the next day. It wasn’t like I often blacked out, and said things I didn’t mean; I said things I did mean. I said things I’d been dying to say. I spilled all of my secrets. Every single dark, hideous secret. I treated every party like it was fucking confession.

It makes sense, if you think about it.

Growing up, I didn’t have any privacy. I wasn’t given any agency. My parents were strict, and religious. They often dressed my sisters and I in identical outfits- and in case the idea of three little girls wearing matching homemade floral dresses isn’t nauseating enough, then maybe you should also know that my mom wore these matching outfits with us.

We were homeschooled from the time I was in third grade until I started high school, and by “homeschooled,” I mean we read the Bible every morning and then played Barbies for the rest of the day while my mom laid in bed. We weren’t allowed to play outside with the neighbors, we were discouraged to have friends or do anything that would detract from “family time,” and we were physically and emotionally punished if we ever did anything to embarrass or otherwise shame the family.

I tried really hard to be good. I was honest to a fault. I was loyal. I adopted all of my mom’s interests (writing, figure skating, animals.) The problem was, I was never good enough. I had the misfortune of being the least physically attractive daughter, so who could blame my parents for being disappointed in me, right? I wish that was a joke, but I honestly can’t say for sure if it is. Whatever the reason was, it was obvious that I just wasn’t up to snuff. Eventually, around age 10, I started getting pretty pissed about it. I had fucking RAGE. And finally, I started “giving them attitude.”

In retrospect, the attitude was pretty tame, but it was made out to be a very major deal. And honestly, it was a big deal because suddenly I wasn’t the least desirable Bowling family accessory; instead, I was a human being, and somehow that was worse. This was when I was officially written off as a problem, and started being accused of doing all kinds of shit I’d never do. I attempted to prove my trustworthiness by being WAY too honest, all the time. I never wanted to be perceived as a sneaky person.

But if I’m going to tell the truth, I did start lying at some point. And I did start doing some of the things I was accused of, because by the time I was in my teens, I was used to being blamed for stuff anyway. I got damn good at lying and being sneaky. I put tinfoil over the alarm sensors so I could sneak out. I used to the school computer’s internet to research how I could install the internet on my own computer at home without my parents knowing, and then I ditched class and hitched a ride to Radio Shack to buy all the necessary hardware to do so. I took the phone off the hook at 6:59 at night, every night, for 2 minutes, so that my parents wouldn’t hear the automated call about my absences (then I’d put the phone back on the hook and delete the voicemail.) The thing is, I always felt incredibly guilty about all of it.

I lived in constant fear of my parents catching me in a lie. I lived in constant fear of disappointing them. I lived in constant fear that the feeling I’d always had of them not loving me might actually be valid.

My senior year, I decided I wanted to go to prom. I didn’t really have the “high school experience” since I wasn’t really allowed to go anywhere ever. Unfortunately, I was banned from prom for too many absences (dammit.) I already had a date though, and still wanted to just at least go to Palm Springs, where the prom was being held, to spend time with my friends before graduation. Of course, my parents said no.

I had never really blatantly disobeyed them before, but something told me that going to that prom was really fucking important. Turns out, it was really fucking important. That decision to go to prom absolutely changed my life.

I wrote my parents a very apologetic letter explaining why I wasn’t going to listen to them this time. I explained that the reason I had so many absences was that school time was the only time they didn’t expect me to be home, which meant it was the only time I could ever spend with friends or go anywhere. I told them I loved them and that I was so sorry, but I had to go. Then I left the letter on my bed, disabled the alarm to the back door, and sneaked out the morning of the prom before my family woke up.

I felt terrified the entire drive to Palm Springs that my parents would find me and bring me back. I was scared every time my friend’s phone rang that it would be my parents trying to get a hold of me so that they could yell at me. Instead, nothing. We drove back in silence the morning after prom, and I braced myself for the backlash when I got inside my house.

Instead, when I got home, there was a duffel bag on the front porch, and a letter from my parents. I couldn’t bring myself to read it, so I had my friend’s boyfriend, Jeremy, read it to me instead. It said, “Since your friends are more important than your family to you, then your friends can take care of you. Here are your things, don’t come home.” Something inside of me broke that day; something that had already been breaking for a long time.

I was right- they actually didn’t love me.

I feel like ever since that day, I’ve been trying way too hard to be… something. I’ve been trying to prove my worth, externally. I’ve been trying to be agreeable. I’ve been trying to make everyone else happy. And then, when I drink, that pressure just slips away and suddenly that old impulse to come completely clean comes back. Essentially, my sober guilt for being unlovable is replaced by my drunk guilt for being fake all the time.

Alcohol allowed me to slip outside of myself and my facade, and actually be real and vulnerable and completely tattle on myself. Maybe something in me craves the consequences? I think I was so conditioned to have no secrets, and no boundaries, and no self-esteem, that I still feel bad for ever having any of those things. So I try to purge myself of them while drunk, because only when I’m drunk am I able to be honest with myself about how isolated and lonely I am; honest about how whatever the fuck I’m doing in my daily life to protect myself isn’t really working out that well.

Anyway, all this to say, I think I’m having a breakthrough here, and also I like weed now.